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The GQ&A: Al Gore

Former vice president Al Gore talks about how we can save the planet from the oilman in the Oval Office

Mr. Vice President, thanks for your time.

Thanks for your interest. [to publicist] Can you get me a diet soda Do you care for one

**No, thanks. I’m on the job. **

No drinking caffeine. That’s a first for a writer. [pauses] I used to be a writer.

**Yeah, I know. **

And I did a lot of drinking of caffeine.

**Tell me in fifty words or less why Americans should care about global warming. **

[pauses, inhales] We are facing a planetary emergency. We have quadrupled our population in the last one hundred years. Our technologies are a thousandfold more powerful, and too many companies and individuals have decided it’s okay not to take responsibility for the consequences of the pollution they are putting into the atmosphere. And what’s happened is, we trap a lot more of the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, and that’s melting almost all the glaciers. It’s starting to melt the North Pole. It’s starting to melt part of Antarctica. It is changing ocean currents and wind currents. It is making hurricanes stronger, scrambling ecological systems, and making us more vulnerable to germs and viruses.

That’s more than fifty words.

And all of these things can be stopped, but they will get worse until we take action. The consequences are so grave that we really have to get our act together in these next few years. It’s not a political issue. It’s a moral issue. It’s an ethical issue. It’s really a spiritual issue. It’s all about who we are.

Is this a vanity project

No.

Global warming has a marketing problem. The term sounds too cozy. Who doesn’t like warm Warm cookies, warm baths, warm—

Yeah, I don’t call it global warming. I call it the climate crisis. I don’t consider myself very good at branding.

**You said it isn’t a political issue, yet it has been made very political. Especially by you. The science, like everything in the culture now, has been heavily politicized. That’s why some people don’t believe it. **

I’m saying I don’t think it should be political. The environment used to be a nonpartisan issue. And in the last twenty years, certain interests allied with the Republican Party have tried to make it a partisan issue.

**How is it that the Democrats have been outmaneuvered on a good thing These days, if you are pro-environment, you’re seen as being a pussy. A tree hugger. When did being strong on the environment start to mean you are weak **

I don’t agree, but I understand what you are saying. And it is part of a larger trend. When America was founded in 1789, the marketplace of ideas—

Wait, where are you going

—the marketplace of ideas was a function of the printing press, and anyone could participate. Forty years ago, television became the principal medium for politics in the U.S., and the average person did not have a voice in that. So the fact-based argument, the rule of reason, the best-evidence rule—all of these time-honored principles have declined in the marketplace of ideas. If the rule of reason plays a diminished role in the public sphere, then every group that relies on it will have a harder time.

Did you read Michael Crichton’s global-warming-doubting book, State of Fear? Bush loves it.

[grimaces] I feel like I have. The only thing to remember about Michael is that he is a science fiction writer.

Some people think you are. I mean, more people have read Crichton’s book than Earth in the Balance, right? So they’re taking his to be the real science.

Well, more people have bought more of his books than most books out there. [laughs]

You once said about Bush, "He is a very weak man.…But I think his weakness is a moral weakness. I think he is a bully, and like all bullies he is a coward when confronted with a force that he’s fearful of." Do you still believe that?

The way he has given in to special interests that are part of his coalition illustrates that. I think that ExxonMobil and some of the other companies that are very powerful in preventing any action against global warming have his ear.

Do you think there is an oil conspiracy in the White House?

No, I don’t think there is a conspiracy. It’s right up front! Both of them are former oil-company ecs or from the oil industries. Why would the Bush-Cheney White House take an oil-industry lawyer-lobbyist and put him in charge of environmental policy in the White House, and empower him to edit and censor all the studies and reports and warnings about the climate crisis that were intended to open the eyes of the American people?

If this is the most urgent crisis we face, why not run for office?

Well, I have run in four national campaigns.

Yeah, I remember.

[laughs] Some people forget. And I feel that—

If this is a moral issue, don’t you have a moral duty to run?

I don’t think so, because I believe that changing the way the American people think about this issue is in some ways a prerequisite for any future president to solve the crisis. There are other ways to serve.

Do you think your documentary would’ve been more effective if you were not in it? I tell people Al Gore has a movie on global warming and they roll their eyes.

[testily] Maybe some do, maybe some don’t.

Why is the perception that Bush killed the Kyoto Protocol when the truth is you negotiated it and Clinton chose not to submit it to the Senate? In effect, it failed on your watch.

Well, Clinton signed it.

But he chose not to put it to a vote.

Yes, because the Senate had been taken over by Republicans and there was hostility to it.

But that’s cowardice.

It gets back to the point I was making. We have to have a sea change in the way the country sees this issue. Because no matter how strongly I think about it, when I went up to Capitol Hill and made the arguments, the coal companies and the oil companies had already been there.

If you could change something right now to stop global warming, what would you do?

Eliminate all subsidies for oil and coal, and we would see renewable energy take off and spread like crazy.

Would you make that a goal of your administration?

Yeah, but I’m not giving you a platform, because I’m not a candidate.

What’s something any individual can do?

Become carbon neutral. Go to climatecrisis.net and you’ll find a carbon calculator. My family and I are carbon neutral.